President Trump speaks to hate group

It is often hard to focus on one particular outrage by President Trump, when he commits so many every day. So I will just stay in my particular lane of particular experience and discuss for a moment the significance of today’s first-ever presidential address today to the Family Research Council's Value Voters Summit. The Southern Poverty Law Center has long-identified the Family Research Council as a hate group, based principally on its vicious hostility to LGBT people.  SPLC definitively lays out the case here:  https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/family-research-council 

For a President of the United States to address the most visible convocation of a national hate group is frightening.  In my heart of hearts, I do not believe that the progress made on LGBT rights and acceptance in our society will be reversed.  Still, when the President embraces without qualification a Senate candidate, Roy Moore, who affirmatively states that “homosexual activity” should be criminalized and that same-gender marriages should be abolished, and further removes federal protections of LGBT people , it sends a chill up my spine.  In a Trump World, my sons and their husbands and my grandchildren are at risk. 

I know from my own direct experience how anti-gay the Family Research Council is.  Between 2005 and 2014, during the ultimately successful struggles to secure sensible LGBT-related health education curriculum and anti-discrimination policies in the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools, see here, I worked to fend off bogus claims and frivolous lawsuits brought by groups including PFOX (“Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays"), whose representative in these disputes was Family Research Senior Fellow for Policy Studies Peter Sprigg.  I debated Mr. Sprigg many times, on paper and in public testimony before the Board of Education and on television on MPT’s State Circle, Fox News 5, and Bruce DePuyt’s NewsTalk program on News Channel 8, as well as in the newspapers.  See here and here.  However gently Peter may speak, he repeatedly makes erroneous statements about LGBT people, consistently presses the discredited notions of “reparative therapy” to make gay people straight, and takes the position that "homosexual activity" should be "criminalized."   See, also, for example here, here, and here..

Lately, Donald Trump has been touting the campaign promises he is fulfilling, like destroying the Affordable Care Act, ending the nuclear deal with Iran, and killing environmental regulations.  He conveniently ignores his campaign statement that he would be "much better for the gays" than Hillary Clinton, and his  promise “to do everything” to protect LGBTQ people.  See video here.  Well, I suppose that I should present the full quote, as it is in the video.  In the wake of the Pulse Nightclub killings, he promised to protect LGBTQ citizens from the “oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.” But he did not promise to protect them from the oppression of a hateful domestic ideology.

NOTE:  In Montgomery County, we are not putting up with the Trump/Pence/Sessions/DeVos/Family Research Council homophobic/transphobic agenda.  See  http://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2017/03/recap-and-resources-sexual-orientation.html

ADDITIONAL NOTE:  The departure of Bruce DePuyt from News Channel 8 is most likely part of the fallout from the purchase of the station by https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/01/11/bruce-depuyt-out-at-newschannel-8-and-wjla/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc.  There is a concerted effort by Trump and his allies to stamp out fair reporting and discussion.